Major Spoilers Question Of The Day: Unsung Heroes Edition

Sometimes, perception becomes the enemy. A film you’ve looked forward to gets panned by critics, your favorite funnyperson is mocked as puerile, you get picked to be the Dragon Warrior, but some snotty little red panda who talks like Rain Man sabotages you at every turn: Life, it’s said, is a crapshoot, with the emphasis on the first syllable. This, by the way, is why I think people gravitate to the idea of Batman as a powerless individual in a sea of superhuman monsters, but then again, he also wins more than Squirrel Girl. As I’ve aged, I find myself appreciating the unsung heroes: Tiny, who flies the ship; Tenzil, whose political connections keep his team afloat; even the much-maligned Sixth Doctor, the only one who was brilliant enough to fix the Chameleon Circuit in his TARDIS and who battled against his own nature as much as The Daleks. Some call me contrarian, but these are the stories that I want more of, leading to today’s unappreciated query…

The MS-QOTD (pronounced, as always, “misquoted”) gets really angry at the Furious Five when they mock Po, but that only makes his triumph sweeter, asking: Which unsung hero of fiction is your favorite under-appreciated character?

The Author

Matthew Peterson

Once upon a time, there was a young nerd from the Midwest, who loved Matter-Eater Lad and the McKenzie Brothers... If pop culture were a maze, Matthew would be the Minotaur at its center. Were it a mall, he'd be the Food Court. Were it a parking lot, he’d be the distant Cart Corral where the weird kids gather to smoke, but that’s not important right now... Matthew enjoys body surfing (so long as the bodies are fresh), writing in the third person, and dark-eyed women. Amongst his weaponry are such diverse elements as: Fear! Surprise! Ruthless efficiency! An almost fanatical devotion to pop culture!